


이젠 너 없이도

by 10cm



Category: Block B
Genre: General Angst, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Self destruction, drug use (eventually), sex under the influence, some brief domestic violence, some deeply fucked up behaviors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:54:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/10cm/pseuds/10cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(even now, without you.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> started some time ago, maybe now i'll finish it. contains abundant alcohol and smoking, some drug use (eventually), lots of self-destructive behaviors. au.

The thing is that Jaehyo knows from the beginning that Jiho is no good for him.

 

It's January when they meet. Outside in the cold, frozen fingers fumbling with his cigarettes in the back alley of a Hongdae club. It's bitterly cold, although the snow won't fall for a few more days, Jaehyo thinks. The air is so cold his breath makes white clouds when he exhales, but there aren't nearly enough clouds overhead for precipitation. Instead, the temperature just settles into his bones. Jaehyo has always chilled easily.

"Do you have a lighter?" a voice asks, and another figure joins him under the overhang above the club's back door. The person is wrapped up in a black coat, it takes a moment for Jaehyo to be able to discern head from body under all that fur and padding. "Left mine inside and if I go back in I'm not gonna have the balls to come back out."

Jaehyo laughs shortly and hands his over. Two flicks. The light illuminates the edges of the stranger's face and then his cigarette flares into life, the orange glow barely bright enough to be caught in his eyes. "Thanks," the stranger says, handing the lighter back. "Jiho."

"Jaehyo," Jaehyo says, tucking the lighter back into his pocket. He's trying to quit, but trying has always been easier than doing. There's a cigarette butt stubbed into the ground that has his DNA all over it. "I don't think I've seen you around."

"No," Jiho agrees. Jaehyo's attempt at opening a conversation flatlines into the silence between them, until Jiho takes a deep drag and, holding the smoke in his lungs, says, "But I guess we could change that."

There's something dark in Jiho's voice, a promise held in along with all that smoke ( _tobacco, tar, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons_ , Jaehyo reminds himself), an edge that makes a tendril of want curl loose and lazy in the pit of Jaehyo's stomach. Jiho is watching him with a slow burn of a gaze. If they were anywhere else, Jaehyo might try to shy away from the way that Jiho looks at him, like he wants to conquer, to consume. 

But they're not anywhere else, and Jaehyo no longer has it in him to play coy. 

"I guess we could," he agrees.

 

There had been a time not that long ago when Jaehyo could say that he didn't normally do things like this, and it wouldn't have been a lie. Clubs and bars, the sweaty press of drunken bodies and the cling of cigarette smoke against his skin and clothes. The burn of alcohol in his throat and the St. Elmo's fire of it creating the illusion of warmth in his belly.

It would be a lie to say it now, though. Things change.

Jaehyo follows Jiho back inside and tries not to shiver into it when he feels the weight of Jiho's hand at the small of his back. An instant. Momentary contact to guide Jaehyo toward a table, and then it's gone, and Jaehyo is cool again. "Guys, ladies," Jiho says. "This is Jaehyo."

Jaehyo gives him silent credit for at least getting the name right. He slips into the booth after Jiho, on the outside, an easy escape. "Hey," he says.

Jiho gives him names, but Jaehyo isn't listening, because he knows he'll forget them all by the end of the night and he's almost sure he won't ever see these people again. There are bottles of liquor on the table. Jaehyo's already tipsy, but he finds himself reaching for one anyway. "Let me," says one of the men—Yu something, or another vowel sound, maybe. "Lemme tell you, you're taking up with the wrong crowd."

"It's your crowd," Jaehyo points out, accepting the drink that's passed his way. 

"Sure," the man says, his gaze sliding honey-slow over to Jiho and then back to Jaehyo. He looks drunk, but there's something sharp in his eyes nonetheless. "That's how I know. He'll eat you up and spit you out, if you let him."

Jiho's hand is on his thigh. Jaehyo's legs shift an inch further apart.

"Thanks for the heads up," Jaehyo says. "But I'm pretty sure I can handle myself."

 

Jiho's bed is a mattress on the floor of a one-room apartment above a hof place that Jaehyo used to frequent. 

His curtains are open, so the apartment is lit by the sterile glow of a streetlight in the alley outside, and it paints Jiho's skin into shades of silver and white that Jaehyo hadn't ever imagined skin being. Jiho has ink all over his body, and Jaehyo's just drunk enough that he wants to put his tongue on every single tattoo, find out whether the salt of Jiho's skin tastes different there. He does, presses Jiho's shoulders back to the bed and mouths along the words on his collarbones. A prayer, profane. Jiho gasps incoherent filth when Jaehyo's mouth finds his nipple.

"Fuck, you're a tease," Jiho says, half-laughing and delighted. "I bet you sound so fucking pretty when you're moaning."

It's a shitty line, straight out of every B-list porno Jaehyo's ever seen, but it still makes him shudder, his cock twitching against Jiho's thigh. He won't say no, if Jiho wants to fuck him 'til he's noisy. Not that it's difficult.

Jiho's lube smells like apples, and Jaehyo is about to comment on it when Jiho gives him a warning look and says, "Don't even open your mouth," which makes Jaehyo laugh as he lays back on the bed. He's trashed, feels like the whole world is spinning and he's its axis, head full like one of those oil-and-water toys where tilting it back and forth makes the fish seem like they're swimming. Jaehyo feels like he's swimming. 

He feels like there's no solid ground beneath him, but he's felt like that for a long time, so that's nothing new.

It's almost a surprise when Jiho pushes a finger into him, and definitely a surprise when he curls it up right into Jaehyo's prostate. On the first try, that almost never happens. Jaehyo all but begs for it, babbling nonsense as Jiho massages inside him, the pad of his finger pressing up against his sensitive insides and making him see stars. 

He's not sure what he says, but most of it is probably disgusting. 

"Holy shit," Jiho says with a laugh. He slips another finger in, and Jaehyo keens in the back of his throat. "You're _mouthy_ , I didn't expect that."

"You said you wanted me loud," Jaehyo says. Actually, Jiho didn't quite say that, but it's also not quite a stab in the dark. He arches his back, pushes a hand through his hair to get it off his sweaty forehead. "Rather I'm quiet?"

"Hell no," Jiho says, his hand spreading out low on Jaehyo's stomach, holding his hips still. "Be as loud as you want."

When he's got three of Jiho's fingers inside him, Jaehyo gives up on maintaining any kind of control over his body. It's unfair, that Jiho is this good at undoing him, but the selfish and indulgent part of Jaehyo doesn't mind it at all. "I'm gonna come," he warns Jiho, the buzz of it like white noise in the back of his head. "Don't stop, oh— _shit_ just like that—"

"So come," Jiho says with a shrug, and Jaehyo obeys.

He's still lazy in the aftermath when Jiho rolls him onto his side and pulls one of Jaehyo's legs up, thigh across Jiho's chest, knee over his shoulder. "Wear a condom," Jaehyo insists, his face half-hidden in the pillow and voice muffled by fabric. "I don't even know your surname, you don't get to fuck me bareback."

Jiho laughs, says, "Way ahead of you," and fucks into Jaehyo in one slow, relentless roll of his hips. 

Even limp and oversensitive, it's still good. Jiho is good. He's insistent but not harsh, his thrusts measured and precise, like he wants Jaehyo's mind unraveled as completely as it can be before he comes. Jaehyo sobs for it, begs for things he didn't even know he wanted. Doesn't have the presence of mind to blush when he feels Jiho's grin curve wicked against the outside of his thigh. 

He comes a second time before Jiho comes at all, and by the time he feels Jiho's body ripple with the tremors of his orgasm, all Jaehyo can think is _finally_. He's exhausted, a mess. Sweaty, hair sticking to his face, body sticking to the sheets and to Jiho's, where they're touching. He's drunk, still, but now he's dizzy with it, and his second orgasm drained him of every last vestige of strength. He feels Jiho pull away, hears the sound of a condom being tied off and disposed of. A moment later, running water.

"Here," Jiho says. 

Jaehyo opens his eyes to see Jiho there, a wet rag in his hand. "I'd do it for you," he begins, then shrugs and hands it over. The rag is lukewarm, which Jaehyo appreciates. He also appreciates that Jiho hadn't—done it for him, that is, because some things are too intimate to be allowed even to those who have seen him come. 

He cleans up quickly. "I should go," Jaehyo says, only it comes out like a question.

Jiho shrugs. "Could," he says. He flops face down onto the vacant half of the mattress. "Or not." His voice is stifled by the pillow.

Could, or not. Jaehyo's not sure he remembers which way is home. Isn't sure he'd make it home without passing out on a doorstep. "Tomorrow," he says, rolls over. Falls asleep.

 

In the morning it's daylight that wakes him. They'd forgotten to close the curtains when they fell asleep. Jaehyo's head is pounding, and his mouth tastes like an ashtray full of dog shit. Next to him, Jiho is still asleep, a beam of sunlight bisecting his spine. Even in the harsher, less forgiving light of day, his profile is still lovely. Jaehyo doesn't regret this, much.

He rolls out of bed, assessing the damage. His ass hurts, unsurprisingly. He has teeth marks in his wrist—his own, Jaehyo recalls, dimly. He bit down on himself the second time he came. His head hurts something fierce, but his stomach is fine. Not bad. It could have been worse. It _has_ been worse.

First, underwear, retrieved from the knob of Jiho's dresser. Then pants, draped over the back of the chair. His shirt takes some hunting, but he retrieves it from the top of Jiho's laundry basket, double checks twice that it's his before he puts it on.

"Nn," Jiho says, stirring vaguely. The sheets have slipped down dangerously low over his back, but Jaehyo remembers his naked ass and thighs and vows to get out of here as soon as possible. "Phone."

"What?"

"Your phone," Jiho clarifies. He's still got his head in the pillow, most of the way, and he's squinting against the light. One hand reaches out towards Jaehyo, gesturing demandingly. "Give it to me."

Jaehyo tosses his phone onto the mattress, and Jiho rolls onto his side to squint at the screen. A minute later, a cell phone vibrates from somewhere on the floor. "There," Jiho says, holding the phone back towards Jaehyo. "Gonna kiss me goodbye?"

"My mouth tastes like crap," Jaehyo says. "I doubt yours is any better."

"Probably right," Jiho agrees. "Woo, by the way."

"What?"

"My surname. It's Woo."

Against his better judgment, Jaehyo grins. "I'm Ahn," he says. "Ahn Jaehyo. I'll see you around."

"I'm counting on it."

 

It's not until Jiho sends him a message on KakaoTalk ('hey boo') two days later that Jaehyo realizes Jiho had programmed himself into Jaehyo's phone as 'the best I ever had.' Rolling his eyes so hard they risk falling out of his head, Jaehyo glances up to make sure there aren't any customers in the store, then pulls the chat room open to reply. 

_'the best I ever had?' you're a cocky one._

Jiho's reply is immediate. _but not a liar_ , he says. _what are you doing?_

_working_ , Jaehyo says. _contributing to society._

_boring. come play with me tonight._

Staring at the words, and the silly sticker that follows them, Jaehyo weighs the pros against the cons. Cons: He has work tomorrow afternoon, and has a phone bill due soon, so he shouldn't be spending money on alcohol. Pros: Jiho is gorgeous, commanding, alluring. Jaehyo is in over his head. 

This is stupid. He barely knows Jiho.

_yeah, all right_ , he agrees. _when and where?_

 

Jiho meets him at the subway station in the middle of a quiet, run-down neighborhood just north of the river. Jaehyo had watched the last train speed away and hoped beyond reason that this was going to be worth it, but Jiho standing there wipes the worries from his mind, kaput. He's got his hands shoved into the pockets of a bomber jacket, and Jaehyo wants Jiho to fuck him up against a wall so he can feel the burn of brick on his back and wear the bruises as reminders that it was real.

He tucks those thoughts into a corner of his mind. "It's fucking cold," is the first thing he says, and Jiho grins sharp-toothed around his cigarette.

"Yeah," he says, "bet I could warm you up," his hand sliding down Jaehyo's back, grabbing his ass and pulling Jaehyo snug up against him. It's possessive, in a way Jaehyo likes but isn't used to. Jaehyo's whole body goes hot, then cold, adrenaline at the danger of letting Jiho touch him like this in public. This isn't Itaewon, where people are more likely to look the other way. 

Still, he slips a thigh between Jiho's, grinds up against him once before pulling away with a grin that's more confident than he feels. "So lead the way," he says.

Admittedly, when Jaehyo agreed to come out, he hadn't expected to be breaking laws. Jiho sneaks him in through a gap in the green striped tarping that surrounds an abandoned, half-demolished apartment building. Instinctively Jaehyo double-checks for security or police. "We're not allowed to be in here," he says. It isn't a question.

"Obviously," says Jiho, "that doesn't usually stop me."

Perhaps it's some vestige of the old Jaehyo that balks at the idea. Some part of him that doesn't thrill at the idea of breaking laws, breaking expectations. His footsteps slow for a moment until his brain wins out over his heart and he quickens again to chase Jiho into the building. 

"I lived in this neighborhood as a kid," Jiho says. They've climbed the stairs to the second floor and are sitting in a gutted living room, the bare face of it laid open by backhoes and demolition teams. One full wall of the apartment yawns wide open, giving them a clear and unbroken view of the city lights spread out below. "A million years ago."

He passes Jaehyo the bottle of soju he'd brought up with him, tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket. Jaehyo hadn't even seen the shape of it.

"Things change," Jiho finally says, with a shrug just slightly too practiced to say he truly doesn't care.

Jaehyo, for want of anything to say, takes a swig of soju and nearly chokes on the fire of it. He passes it back to Jiho, who does the same, although with more grace. Or more practice. 

"So you're back here for what?" Jaehyo finally asks. "Closure?"

"Nah," Jiho says. He's not looking at Jaehyo, but out at the sprawl of urban development below them. There are narrow alleyways that crawl and writhe through the neighborhood, closed in by older houses with clay-tile roofs, but a few blocks south the behemoths of high-rises are starting to loom on the horizon. Things change. "Just curiosity."

There's something bittersweet in the tug of his mouth when Jiho looks over at Jaehyo, finally. "Tell me a secret," he says.

"Why?"

"I told you one of mine."

Jaehyo snorts and hides his face briefly behind the bottle of soju again. "I don't give my secrets away," he says. "I didn't ask for yours, you don't get to ask for mine. You have to earn it."

He's just a little bit tipsy, the soju going to his head. His legs dangle out into open air. Jaehyo leans a little forward and looks over the edge, feels that sinking pull in his stomach that makes him wonder what it would feel like to free-fall. He's not, at least, drunk enough to try it.

Jiho is laughing. "You're a tough cookie, Ahn Jaehyo," he says. "All right, fine. I'll earn your secrets."

It's been a long time since anyone tried, but somehow Jaehyo doesn't doubt that Jiho could do it. He strikes Jaehyo sometimes as a half-wild dog with its teeth in a prize, unwilling to let go until the resistance stops. In this case, that prize is Jaehyo. Maybe.

"Good luck," Jaehyo says.

 

A secret:

Jaehyo had moved out of his house the day after he graduated high school. Or, more importantly, the day after his parents saw him kiss another boy, pressed up against the wall just inside the boy's bathroom where he'd been adjusting his cap and gown. The boy had been his boyfriend at the time, but ceased definitively to be so when Jaehyo was suddenly homeless and terrified.

A friend had taken pity on him then, let him sleep on a fold-up camping cot in the corner of his bedroom until Jaehyo found part-time work and a place that wouldn't look too hard at his identification when he signed the papers for a lease. The key money was a loan, and it had taken Jaehyo three years to pay it back. 

No ground under his feet, and nothing to his name but his body and what he can do with it. 

 

Jaehyo meets Yukwon—that was his name, Yukwon, the one with the vowel sound—again in March, and they're both sober this time. "Hey," Yukwon says, greeting him with a shoulder bump and a nod that Jaehyo returns. The way Yukwon looks at him makes him feel wary, like he's being sized up, but doesn't know why.

They're sitting on the jungle gym at the playground in Hongdae, and Jaehyo is smoking, although not as ferociously as he had in winter. He's given up trying to kick the habit. It's impossible, around Jiho.

"I heard you're moving in," Yukwon says after a long, but not uncomfortable, silence. 

Jaehyo wrinkles his nose, exhales smoke through his nostrils. "You heard wrong," he says. "I have my own place." 

That's not to say that most of his clothes haven't found a home at Jiho's apartment, or that Jaehyo doesn't spend five nights of the week there. Not even to say that Jaehyo doesn't want to move in, just that his name isn't on the lease, and that he still pays rent on his own officetel one-room down closer to Sangsu. In some ways, Jaehyo's sure he's moved in in all ways but the ones that matter. Something holds those words back, makes him unwilling to admit as much to Yukwon, who is looking at Jaehyo like he knows all of the secrets anyway.

At the edge of the playground, Jiho is talking to a friend in too-tight blue jeans and a jacket that seems too light for the still crisp spring air. The chill of February is still a recent memory for Jaehyo, whose warmth never seems to reach his fingertips. 

"Look at you," Yukwon finally murmurs. He puts a cigarette between his lips, but doesn't light it. Just glances back and forth between Jaehyo and Jiho for a moment, contemplative. "He's got his teeth in you already."

Jaehyo bristles. "I told you I can handle myself."

Yukwon makes a noncommittal noise. "I don't doubt you can," he says. "I've known Jiho a long time, that's all." 

There's weight to the words, like a warning. Writing on the wall that Jaehyo doesn't quite know how to read. He shrugs. "Things change," he says, stubbing his cigarette out on the brickwork underneath him. Jiho's conversation is drawing to a close. He exchanges a handshake with the friend and turns back toward the two of them, hands stuffed deep into his jacket pockets.

"Things change," Yukwon agrees. "People don't, always."

"Quit talking shit about me," Jiho says once he's in earshot. His gaze slides from Yukwon to Jaehyo, and Jaehyo's entire body sings at the way Jiho looks at him. The way Jiho cups his hand around the back of Jaehyo's neck, brief, but searing. 

A half-wild dog, Jaehyo thinks. Teeth, indeed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (even now, without you.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> contains abundant alcohol and smoking, some drug use (eventually), lots of self-destructive behaviors. what goes up must come down. au.

Jaehyo's lease is up in July.

He doesn't mean to bring it up, really. It just slips out. Jaehyo is stretched out on Jiho's mattress and Jiho is at his desk, wearing his underwear but no shirt, no pants. He's all lines, slim hips, tattoos barely visible. And Jaehyo is distracted, enough that he says things before he thinks them through. 

"Are you coming after work tomorrow?" Jiho asks. He doesn't turn to look at Jaehyo. He's focused, although Jaehyo can't tell on what.

"Maybe," Jaehyo says. "Depends. I have to go talk to the landlord," his gaze traces the length of Jiho's spine like maybe that'll make Jiho turn around, finally, "figure out where I'm gonna put my stuff when I move out."

"You're moving out?" Jiho turns. Maybe Jaehyo's telepathy was working. He leans one arm over the back of the desk chair and fixes his gaze on Jaehyo, contemplative and heavy. "When? You didn't say your lease was up."

Jaehyo shrugs. "Two weeks," he says. "I might re-lease. Might not." 

Might, if he thinks he can keep swinging under the landlord's radar, if he can keep the neighbors from seeing him bring Jiho home. Jiho's been to his apartment only twice, because Jaehyo's walls are thin and his neighbors, less inclined to turn a blind eye to the dalliances of two boys who can't keep their hands off each other, on good days. 

"So move in," Jiho says. 

It slices through Jaehyo's thoughts like a hot knife, drawing his focus in. "What?" Jaehyo says, although his stomach is already dropping out of his body. "Move in? Here?"

Jiho shrugs. "Five nights a week, you're here anyway," he says. A quick glance cuts across the room toward Jiho's closet, which stands open, half-populated with Jaehyo's sweatshirts. The drawers have his jeans and underwear. Jaehyo has a toothbrush on the sink and shampoo in the bathroom. The only things he doesn't have here are his cologne and his guitar, although that last one has been a close call, once or twice. 

"Your landlord won't mind?" Jaehyo asks. Vestiges.

With a laugh, Jiho turns back towards his desk. "She probably won't even know," he says. "If she hasn't kicked me out for how mouthy you are, she's not gonna kick me out for anything."

Head propped up on the pillow, Jaehyo considers the landscape of Jiho's back, the ridges and valleys of his ribcage and the mountain range of his spine. He's spent hours learning all that topography, the way that earthquake tremors shake Jiho's frame when he comes, the way the tectonic plates of his wrist bones shift when he gestures as he talks. Jiho talks with his hands. He likes the idea of waking up to this landscape every day, watching the sunrise light it a thousand firey colors.

But Jiho is temperamental. Jaehyo knows that, too. Knows how Jiho's mood can shift like mercury, quicksilver, sliding from sweet and soft to fierce and withdrawn in the span of minutes, when it hits. Knows better than to take this offer at face value, not until Jiho's offered again, at least once. Sometimes, Jiho says things that he doesn't mean, says things that he means, but quietly, so Jaehyo doesn't hear. It's a guessing game with him, sometimes. Jaehyo has most of the moves memorized, but Jiho can still take him by surprise.

 

Jiho offers again three days later, and this time, Jaehyo says yes.

He moves his things in on a Saturday, two days before his lease is set to expire. Only what he can bring with him, what there's space for in the apartment. His bedframe, since Jiho hadn't had one, and some of his shelves. One chair. The rest goes. Despite the small touch of Jaehyo's belongings, the apartment begins to feel a little more like _them_ and a little less like Jiho. 

They set up the bed and then fuck on it, and afterwards Jiho kisses Jaehyo and tells him, "Don't go anywhere," grins like a thousand suns because he knows Jaehyo won't.

Jiho runs out not long after, just for a moment. For work, he says. Funny, how five months into this, Jaehyo still isn't really sure what Jiho does. Work, he says, at two in the afternoon on a Thursday; work, at eleven in the evening on a Saturday. Art, maybe. Jiho is always drawing, sketching the shapes of anything and everything he can remember or imagine. Jaehyo doesn't care, too much. Doesn't think too much on it. 

When he comes back, Jiho's mood is different. Fiercer, sharper. Not bad, not dark the way it gets sometimes, but different. It has edges. "I put some of my clothes away," Jaehyo says, when Jiho comes in and closes the door behind him. Jaehyo is sitting on the floor, his toes barely brushing a cardboard box. "Then got lazy. I'll do the rest tomorrow."

"Suit yourself," Jiho says. He pushes Jaehyo down onto his back on the mattress and leans over him. Kisses him like he wants to drown in it, like he wants to suck the air out of Jaehyo's lungs. Licks into his mouth and makes Jaehyo moan, makes him shiver as Jiho sucks on his tongue.

Then he's gone, pulling away and heading for his desk. He leaves Jaehyo on the floor, still shivering with flickers of arousal, and ducks his head over his sketchbook instead. 

Jaehyo breathes in, breathes out. Watches the lines of Jiho's back and thinks, _yes_. 

 

A series of first times.

The first time that Jaehyo stays in a club until it's light outside, stumbling into a taxi as the sun starts to rise. Jiho presses against him, a little too close, and laughs limoncello into his collarbone as Jaehyo stumbles over the syllables of their shared address. The taxi driver looks at them with both eyebrows raised, but he can't refuse the fare, so he just drives. Jiho slides his hand up the inside of Jaehyo's thigh, fingers tracing his inseam, and Jaehyo has to bite his lip to stay quiet.

"I can't wait to get you home," Jiho whispers into the space below Jaehyo's ear.

He talks like that, sometimes, like he's all lines from pornos, but it works. God, does it work. By the time Jaehyo stumbles in the front door he's hard. By the time they're done, it's morning with a vengeance, and Jaehyo sleeps through both of his alarms and misses work the next day.

It's worth it.

The first time Jaehyo pole dances, graceful in the way only the very drunk can be, hips swinging until he's sure Jiho is tracking his every movement with hawk-sharp eyes. Jaehyo is no dancer, he's never let the thought cross his mind, but he likes the way Jiho looks at him. He'd seen that same promise in Jiho's eyes the very first day they met, in the crowded side doorway of the club in Hongdae. 

Later, Jiho fucks him against the window of their apartment. Tells him, between kisses mouthed against the back of his neck, that if he wanted everyone to see what he's packing, they could fuck like this from now on. Jaehyo's on edge the entire time, desperately turned on, both hoping someone will look up and see him and praying that they don't. 

The first time Jaehyo lets someone pour alcohol into his mouth from the dais, citrusy and sharp. It spills from the corner of his mouth and runs in rivulets down his throat. Rivulets that, later, Jiho traces with his tongue. 

The first time Jaehyo lets Jiho have him in the bathroom of the gay club in Itaewon. 

And the second, and the third.

 

In September, it starts to get cool again.

They come out of a bar and walk straight into Jaehyo's brother, who blinks at the two of them, bemused. At least he doesn't run away screaming, which is what Jaehyo would have expected if it had been any other member of his family. He almost wants to ask what Changin is doing in Seoul, if he wouldn't mind going back to Busan where Jaehyo can be sure that his family will never again lay a hand on the life he's trying to build for himself.

Instead, Changin just looks at them for a long moment, at Jaehyo's arm around Jiho's waist, Jiho's arm around his shoulders. If it weren't for Changin knowing what he knows, Jaehyo supposes they could look like friends. Drunken friends, out for a night of fun.

But Changin knows, so he just asks, "Boyfriend?"

They haven't talked about that, so Jaehyo shrugs. "What's it to you?" he asks. 

Changin had never said anything cruel to Jaehyo, not when his parents were flaying him alive in the car on the way home from graduation, not during the tense evening that followed. He had never said any of the things that Jaehyo's mother said. But when Jaehyo's parents had thrown him out with little more than a backpack of clothes, Changin hadn't defended him, either. He had just watched as Jaehyo made his way down the street.

Jaehyo knew, because he'd looked back.

Jiho doesn't know Changin. Wouldn't have any reason to, but he can sense the tension in the atmosphere. He takes half a step closer to Jaehyo and slides his hand slowly up the back of Jaehyo's neck, possessive. Conquering, claiming. This land is mine. "Is there a problem here?" he asks, both challenging and cautious. Curiously attuned to the subtleties of the interaction, although Jaehyo doesn't know how that's possible. 

"No," Changin says, breaking the silence first. "No problem."

When he brushes by the two of them, Jaehyo presses a little closer to Jiho and turns his head to watch him go. This time it's Changin who looks back, and he and Jaehyo hold the gaze for a long moment before Jaehyo breaks it.

It feels good, in a way. Final, to turn his back on something that has ached so badly for so long.

"Friend of yours?" Jiho asks. He seems to know better than to press.

Jaehyo shakes his head. "No," he says. "Just someone I used to know." 

 

He spends a lot of time with Jiho drunk, which is fine. It's fun, in a way that Jaehyo had never had the chance to know before—losing his inhibitions, forgetting about all the chips on his shoulders, about the worries that feel like a cannonball on a chain around his ankle, some days. Jiho lets him let go of all of that, and Jaehyo, for a time, has never been happier.

 

"Just show me," Jaehyo half-laughs, half-pleads, his arms around Jiho's waist and his chin on Jiho's shoulder. They're still tangled in the sheets and Jaehyo is a little too hot. The apartment below them always has their heating cranked up, no matter the season. But he likes it, likes how dry and warm his skin feels where it presses against Jiho's, where Jiho's presses against his when he tries to roll away from Jaehyo.

"I said I take it back," Jiho says. He's trying hard to keep a straight face, his sketchbook clutched to his chest like a doll to a child, but his voice gives him away, pitched higher, wavery with restrained amusement. "You don't get to see, you asshole."

"No, I promise I'll be good," and Jaehyo rolls Jiho onto his back so Jaehyo can lean down and kiss him. Soft, sweet, possessive. He likes it like this, sometimes.

Nights between them are often splintered broken mirrors, fragments of moments that Jaehyo will remember later: The slant of Jiho's gaze across the room, fingers at the small of his back, the way Jiho's lips curved around a cigarette, breath making white clouds in the air. Hangovers usually claim the rest, and the selective, fractured amnesia of alcohol. That's fine—they can make more memories, later.

But this, this is something else. Something different, gentler, more yielding. The late autumn sunlight comes through the glass warmer than it feels, diffusing through Jiho's curtains and making everything soft. It makes Jiho glow, a little, when Jaehyo looks at him just right.

He thinks, not for the first time, that he's in over his head.

Jiho kisses him back, then shrugs him off. Jaehyo rolls onto his side and props his head up on one hand as Jiho puts the sketchbook on the mattress beside them. "Fine," he says, affecting nonchalance. It's so convincing that anyone who isn't Jaehyo might believe it. "Look, if you want to that badly."

"I do," Jaehyo murmurs.

He touches each page reverently, turning them so carefully that Jiho snorts a laugh and makes a comment that the damn thing won't break, Jaehyo, seriously. But they are precious to Jaehyo, whether or not Jiho can see that. The products of Jiho's efforts, of his mind—so much of which is still a mystery to Jaehyo—are things that should be treasured.

The drawings are lovely, mostly. If not lovely, then at least skilled. Natural talent that Jaehyo could recognize a mile off, and every drawing is filled with something, some quality that makes Jaehyo linger a little longer on each one. He wonders if maybe he could pick it out, the moment, the emotion that created such a piece of art. Wonders how many, if any, are about him.

He can't ask, won't ask. And Jiho will probably never tell him, but Jaehyo wonders anyway.

"They're beautiful," he finally says, closing the back cover of the sketchbook when he's reached the last drawing. "Thank you for showing me."

Jiho shrugs like it's nothing, like it isn't something that Jaehyo wants to tuck in close next to his heart and keep. "No problem," he says, picking up the sketchbook and tossing it toward the desk. Jaehyo almost shivers at the callous treatment. "It's a hobby."

"Do you ever want to make it more than a hobby?" Jaehyo asks.

For a moment it seems like he's asked the wrong question, until Jiho shrugs and rolls onto his back. "A long time ago," he said. "Back when I was still a kid who thought I could make a life out of something like that. It's been a while." 

It sounds so familiar it aches. "I see," Jaehyo says.

"Anyway," Jiho says, and the conversation, just like that, is over.

 

Jaehyo's songs are a secret Jiho earns, in December. 

He thinks about Jiho's art, the drawings he keeps tucked away in sketchbooks and on napkins and sometimes on himself, when he's not paying attention. Thinks of those things and brings out his guitar, and the book of notes and lyrics he keeps for himself, trying to write down all the melodies and verses that come to mind.

"They're not very good," he says, but before he can even make it all the way through the sentence, Jiho holds up one hand to silence him. Fingers press to his lips. Jaehyo feels Jiho's intensity all the way through his body.

"Don't do that," he says. "Just sing."

So Jaehyo does. It's been a while since he played and meant it, but he makes his way slowly through the song, humming the lyrics in places where he hadn't penned any yet. Jiho watches him, legs curled underneath himself on the mattress, hands curled into the sheets. Like maybe he wants to reach out towards Jaehyo, sitting at the desk, and tug him in. Or maybe like he wants to fix Jaehyo's playing.

He doesn't, though. He just sits and waits until Jaehyo is done, and once the last notes have faded, Jiho says, "I'm glad you didn't say anything."

"What?"

"When you were trying to tell me how to feel about your singing," Jiho says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Like I could be disappointed with that. You sounded really nice."

The praise makes Jaehyo flush. No one has heard him sing since he was in high school. 

"You wrote those?" Jiho asks. His gaze finds the notebooks, the chord progressions scrawled in messy pencil handwriting above the lyrics. "They're good. I mean, not professional, you know? But good. I liked them."

A long time ago, Jaehyo had dreamed of being a singer, before he had realized that for most people, being a singer just meant being a waiter with weekend gigs, sometimes. He'd tried hard to deny the seed its water and light, to make it falter and fade into nothingness. All it takes is a few words from Jiho for the sprout to come roaring back to life, taking root fiercely inside Jaehyo's chest.

"Maybe try an A-minor in that bridge, though," Jiho is saying. "You missed just a little bit of the melancholy you needed, I think."

His eyes are bright. Jaehyo meets them and smiles. 

"You got it," he says.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (even now, without you.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> contains abundant alcohol and smoking, some drug use (eventually), lots of self-destructive behaviors, and at a brief scene of dubious consent. things stretched taut. au.

Jaehyo wakes up in January with a hangover and twenty-six missed calls on his cell phone.

Next to him, Jiho rolls onto his back, then onto his other side, squinting against the sun even in sleep. It's bright through the thin curtains that hang in the windows, much too bright for the time that Jaehyo should be waking up to go to work. Not an early shift, but a mid-day one, one that started before lunch—not in the middle of the afternoon, which is what time Jaehyo's phone clock tells him that it is. It's just past two. He was supposed to be at work at eleven.

Panic clearing the last traces of sleep out of his veins, Jaehyo rolls out of bed and stumbles into the bathroom, closing the door behind him a little too forcefully. He rings his boss. It rings forever.

He's about to hang up when the ringing cuts off. "Jaehyo?"

"I'm so sorry," Jaehyo gets out, the words tripping over themselves in their haste to leave his mouth. "I set two alarms and they didn't go off, or—or I slept through them or something, I'm not feeling great so—but I can be there in ten minutes—"

With nothing but a heavy sigh, his boss cuts through Jaehyo's desperate, hurried rush of words. Jaehyo bites his tongue, clamping the rest of them deep inside his throat.

"This isn't the first time you've been late," his boss finally says. 

Jaehyo's stomach hits the floor.

"I know," he nearly whispers.

"In fact, you've been cutting it close for months," the world spins around Jaehyo, he takes hold of the sink for balance, "and you were half an hour late three weeks ago, and in November you had two no-show weekends in a row."

Jaehyo might throw up, but he tries his best not to. "Yes, sir," he says.

"You've been working with us for quite a while, Jaehyo," his boss says, not without some sympathy in his voice. "And I know things aren't easy for you, but I can't employ people I can't trust to show up for work."

There's a long, pregnant pause. Jaehyo almost stops breathing until he hears the tell-tale hitch that says his boss is about to speak. "Don't come in to work tomorrow," his boss says, softly, but with a certain finality that tells Jaehyo he won't be able to talk his way out of this one. "I'm sorry."

As soon as the line goes dead, Jaehyo really does throw up. Hunched over the toilet, cell phone abandoned in the sink, he retches until there's nothing left but bile, and then a couple more times for good measure. Outside, he hears Jiho say his name, but he can't find the energy to reply, not until there's rustling, footsteps, the sound of knuckles meeting wood.

"Jaehyo," Jiho says. "You okay?"

He's not okay, no. He's just had the last, most stable footing he's ever held ripped out from under him, and it's his fault. Jaehyo isn't okay. He takes a shaky breath and says, "Yeah," although his voice is wet and weak and not at all convincing.

He flushes the toilet. After a pause, the door opens, and Jiho leans against the frame, looking down at him. "You're not okay," he says, and although there's sleep in his voice and the corners of his eyes, he looks at Jaehyo like he can see right through him. "What happened?"

"It's two-thirty," Jaehyo says, dully. He sits on the floor of the bathroom and leans his head back against the wall.

"Yeah?"

"And I was supposed to be at work by eleven." 

He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, Jiho is pursing his lips, thoughtful. "And you called your boss," he says, a question that isn't really a question.

"Former boss," Jaehyo corrects.

That says all that it needs to, of course. Jiho exhales heavily and sits down on the floor, too, just inside the door. He's naked, and Jaehyo is mostly there, but for once, the sinking feeling of despair in Jaehyo's stomach is enough to outweigh the instinctive pull of attraction he feels towards Jiho's body. "So, unemployed," he says, as though it isn't a big deal. As though Jaehyo's entire world hasn't just shifted off its axis. "That's rough."

"I think that's a pretty mild word—"

Jiho shrugs. "But nothing we can't handle," he says, reaching out and wrapping his fingers loosely around Jaehyo's ankle. The pads of his fingers press against the knob of bone on the inside, and Jaehyo shivers at how quiet, how intimate the touch is. "You have savings. I get enough to keep us afloat for a month or two while you find another job." His thumb strokes absently against Jaehyo's skin. "It sucks, but it's not the end of the world. You'll be fine. We'll be fine."

When he looks into Jiho's eyes, Jaehyo can almost believe him.

 

Later, Jiho comes back to the apartment and sits them both down in the middle of the floor. "I have something you could try," he says, putting a—a pencil case?—on the floor between them. "If it's not too much, and if you want to."

At first, Jaehyo can't process it. His mind has been fuzzy all day, and this parses as a puzzle that Jiho wants him to solve.

Jiho reaches out and unzips the case, opens it to reveal a spoon, a lighter, a syringe. Two balloons, light blue and light pink, which Jaehyo would think a funny addition to the collection if he didn't know immediately that they're much more than just that. "Jesus," he breathes out, at once shocked to his core and completely unsurprised that this is something Jiho can get his hands on. 

"Just figured you might want to get away for a little while," Jiho says. 

They've been high together, before, but nothing like this. Those times were just weed, blunts rolled by quick fingers out back behind clubs, or in their apartment, or on a friend's living room floor. Those times were easy, like smoking a cigarette, except the smoke was sweeter and the burn lingered longer than tobacco did in the lungs. 

This is something else.

"You don't have to," Jiho adds, when Jaehyo hesitates a moment too long to seem natural. "No peer pressure. No boyfriend pressure." That earns a smile from Jaehyo—Jiho calling himself Jaehyo's _boyfriend_ always does. "But it'll make you feel really good, and you look like you could handle a few good feelings right now, baby."

Jaehyo weighs the idea against everything he knows from high school, all the anti-drug commercials, the fearmongering that had gone on in health class—just once is enough to make you an addict! Wonders if it'll feel good enough to be worth all that, and anyway, it's not like he makes it a habit.

"Sure," he says, "okay," and nods. Jiho smiles. "Show me what to do."

It should probably shock him, how good Jiho is at all this. He holds the lighter in one hand and the spoon in the other—ambidextrous; he'd told Jaehyo once—and melts the tar down into a little water. Picks up the syringe and sucks it all up, easy as anything. "You do this a lot, don't you," Jaehyo says. Asks, although it comes out like a statement.

"Sometimes," Jiho says, but the way he handles the syringe means a little more than _sometimes_.

He hands Jaehyo a cotton swab and a container of rubbing alcohol. "Clean your elbow," he says, scooting closer until their knees, legs crossed, are touching. "Don't worry, okay? I'm right here, I've got you." 

That, more than anything—more than the promise of a good high, more than the idea of feeling detached for a little while—is what settles Jaehyo's stomach, and he offers his left arm. "Okay," he says, nodding. "Okay."

 

Jiho doesn't get high, but he lets Jaehyo put his head in Jiho's lap and talk, slow, lazy, winding sentences that never end, just grow in different directions. Things that Jaehyo won't remember, in the morning. He falls asleep mid-sentence and wakes up to Jiho's arm around his waist, the euphoria still lingering in his veins. He feels light-headed and disoriented and, for the first time in a long, long while, happy. 

He kisses Jiho half-awake and says, "You know I'm in love with you."

Jiho wrinkles his nose, his eyes still mostly closed, and says, "Yeah, I know. Go back to sleep."

Jaehyo doesn't dream, that night.

 

It isn't enough. He doesn't know why he'd expected it to be.

Jaehyo justifies it to himself in a series of half-assed arguments in his own mind, that twenty thousand won is enough to buy enough to get them both high and that's just about what they'd spend if they went out to lunch, anyway. Why not stay home and eat instead? Why not stay home instead of drinking on the weekends, or come home early to avoid taking a taxi? Why not just stay out until the dawn so they can catch the first train, spend two thousand instead of eighteen. Why not?

Jiho doesn't say anything when Jaehyo asks him to teach him how to shoot up, just raises an eyebrow and says, "Okay, but you gotta get your own works eventually." Teaches Jaehyo how to cook the heroin from tar to liquid, teaches him how to find a vein and get the needle in just right so it doesn't go under the skin instead. Jaehyo isn't as good at it as Jiho is, but then again, he supposes he hasn't had as much practice.

There's a guy Jiho knows, Donghyun, who sells balloons to Jaehyo for a discount because he thinks that Jaehyo's pretty. "He's yours?" Donghyun asks Jiho the first time they all meet.

Jiho slides his hand up the back of Jaehyo's shirt, settles his thumb warm and possessive into the dip at the base of his spine. "He's mine," he confirms, his gaze challenging Donghyun to do anything about it. Jaehyo shivers, presses a little closer. 

"Just asking," Donghyun says. He leaves it at that, but Jaehyo can feel a heavy gaze on his back until well after they're out of the park.

"He looked at you like he wanted to fucking swallow you," Jiho bites out later. He's fucking Jaehyo so hard it stings when the sharp points of Jiho's hipbones meet Jaehyo's ass. Fucking out the aggression that such unabashed appreciation of what's _his_ has sparked. "I hate that."

"Did he?" Jaehyo manages, words coming hard-won between panted breaths. Even the pain of Jiho's hands at his wrists, Jiho's hips against his, is enough to make him want more. "Wasn't looking."

Jiho snorts. "You noticed."

"Doesn't matter." Jaehyo wraps his arms low around Jiho's waist and rolls them both over, until it's Jaehyo on top, hips rolling down slow and earning a groan from low in the back of Jiho's throat. "He can look all he wants as long as he knows I'm yours."

 

They walk into a convenience store and Jiho goes right to the counter, asks for a brand of cigarettes he knows they don't carry. Jaehyo can hear his voice, clear over the tinny pop music pumped through the shop speakers: "Oh, what? You're kidding, didn't you just have them like two weeks ago?"

It makes him smile, just a little. Jiho can be a damn good actor when he wants to be.

To the sound of Jiho's increasingly nonsensical conversation with the cashier, Jaehyo sneaks sandwiches and triangle kimbaps into the pockets of Jiho's bomber jacket, two sizes too big on Jaehyo's slimmer frame. He grabs a soda and comes up to the counter, where he nudges Jiho and says, "Are you still obsessed with that brand? Just get something else or we can go somewhere else."

Jiho sighs heavily, but he doesn't press the issue. "Fine," he says, and steps aside to let Jaehyo pay for his soda.

Outside, a block and a half away, Jaehyo hands a sandwich and kimbap to Jiho and says, "You gotta work on your conversation ideas, though," before laughing and leaning in to kiss him. Some passing teenagers make scandalized sounds and hurry past.

There was a time that Jaehyo wouldn't have let Jiho lay a hand on him in public, but that was a long time ago. Things change.

 

The half-demolished apartment building in Jiho's old neighborhood is long gone, but there are always other places to sneak into. Jiho finds them so easily, sometimes Jaehyo wonders about it—whether there's a network that Jiho's tapped into, some way he's plugged in so he always knows where the best hideouts are. 

They sneak in past the construction tarps and break into old buildings. Sometimes it's just a matter of pushing in through an open door, but sometimes Jiho has to break a lock, break a window just to get them inside. The buildings are dark and dusty, covered in a fine dusting of brick powder from all the places that have been torn down, knocked out by wrecking balls and backhoes. 

They sit in the second floor hallway. Jiho tucks his flashlight between his jaw and shoulder, and Jaehyo keeps his trained on the floor between them so Jiho will have enough light to cook by.

"Where do you think all the people who lived here are now?" Jaehyo asks, later, after. They're wandering through the halls of the building, up the emergency stairs and into abandoned apartments. In some of them, there are mementos of the families that used to occupy the building, pictures on the walls or floor, a teddy bear, a pair of shoes left behind. 

"Somewhere else," Jiho says.

"Smartass. Do you think they left because they wanted to?"

For a long moment, Jiho's quiet. He touches the edges of a framed flower pressing, drawing his fingertips through the fine dust that coats it. No one has lived here in a long time. "Does anybody ever really leave a place because they want to?" he finally says, his gaze preternaturally bright in the darkness of three in the morning. 

Jaehyo thinks about all the homes he's loved and lost, all the places he's moved on from. Busan, in high school. Anyang, where he'd settled for a time after that. His apartment in Seoul, before he'd met Jiho. "Sometimes," he says. "But not often." 

Jiho shrugs and heads for the door. "Then they're probably wherever you go when you get kicked out of the place you called home," he says. "Somewhere that'll always feel a little bit empty."

 

On the sidewalk outside, they run into a police officer.

The squad car is parked a block ahead, against the curb, and its flashing blue and cherry lights are too bright for Jaehyo's sensitive eyes. So, for that matter, is the bright neon yellow of the cop's reflector vest, and Jaehyo has to try hard not to squint against the glare. "It's a little late for you two to be in this neighborhood, isn't it?" the cop says, flashlight shining first on Jaehyo's chest, then on Jiho's. "Mind telling me what you're up to?"

Jaehyo takes a quiet breath and tries to steady his shoulders. He's still high, and some paranoid part of the back of his mind wonders if the cop can't tell, if it isn't written there in his gaze, in the slight tremble in his fingers. "Just walking," he says. "We live nearby."

It's not much of a lie. Their apartment is only a ten or fifteen minute walk away, if they walk quickly. But it sounds like a lie, and the police officer studies their faces carefully. "Let me see your IDs," he says.

At least they hadn't forgotten their wallets.

The cop studies their identification cards for a moment, then hands them back. Something in his face says that he doesn't want to, but Jaehyo knows well enough that he has nothing to hold them on. They're adults. There's no curfew, and they can't be arrested just for walking on the sidewalk at night. "Get home safe," the police officer finally says, his flashlight sweeping once again over their faces. Jaehyo does squint, this time.

They walk quickly, and once they've turned the corner out of sight of the police officer and his car, Jiho pushes Jaehyo up against a wall and kisses him deep and slow and lazy. "Fuck," he breathes into Jaehyo's mouth, and Jaehyo laughs. "We're the luckiest bastards in Seoul."

"I almost—" Jaehyo begins, then kisses Jiho again, until his lips are chapped and his mouth is dry. "Let's go home."

 

Money is always tight. Jaehyo's savings dwindle and Jiho makes money, but not enough to pay the rent and get them both high. It makes for uncomfortable nights, itchy skins and tense words as the bite of sobriety gets its teeth into them. Jiho won't let him say the word _withdrawal_ but they both know what it is, and they know that it will get worse before it gets better. They both say things they don't mean, kiss them better, but with a little more force than necessary.

Donghyun calls Jaehyo. Asks, "How come I never see you anymore, pretty boy?"

Jaehyo's not in the mood, but he says, "Nothing personal, money's just a little tight right now," because he knows better than to piss off their dealer. 

The laugh he hears is full of promise. "Yeah?" Donghyun says. "I doubt that's anything we can't find a way around. Come meet me tonight. We'll figure it out." He gives Jaehyo an address and hangs up, and Jaehyo ignores the sinking feeling in his stomach as he goes to get ready.

Jiho is out—at work, whatever his work is—so Jaehyo goes alone, walks through the quieter backstreets of the neighborhood until he finds the place that Donghyun had mentioned. It's out of the way, far from the noise and thriving nightlife, tucked into an alley between a frozen yogurt shop and a clothing boutique. "Donghyun?" Jaehyo asks, and a form moves away from the wall and into the light.

"Hey," he says. Donghyun has a sharp-toothed wolf smile, and Jaehyo thinks about what Jiho said before: _He looked at you like he wanted to fucking swallow you._

"Hey," Jaehyo says. "What's up?"

"Depends," Donghyun says. He glances up the street, but there are no pedestrians. Not for blocks, and no one will come down here, anyway. Jaehyo knows that on instinct. "Depends on how badly you want that fix."

His gaze flickers down to Jaehyo's mouth, and with a certain cold clarity, Jaehyo knows exactly what Donghyun is asking.

The revulsion is immediate, roiling in the pit of his stomach, but on its heels is something else. Not curiosity, no, but the visceral memory of Jiho throwing up after one too many nights spent high, the memory of his skin crawling, blankets too rough to let him get any sleep. Jaehyo remembers thinking, _This is withdrawal_ , thinking, _I would rather die than go through this again._

"Fine," he says.

He blows Donghyun in the alleyway, quick and efficient, and when he's done, Donghyun hands him two balloons and strokes his jaw. "You're good," he says. "Let me know when you need more."

Jaehyo throws up in a gutter on the way home. Sits there for a moment, shaking, wondering at the magnitude of what he's just done. Can he tell Jiho? Could he ever look Jiho in the face again without the memory of Donghyun's hands in his hair, his mouth on Donghyun's dick? Could he?

At home, Jaehyo showers until he turns pink and raw, but he still can't wash away the feeling of phantom fingers and grime on his skin.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (even now, without you.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> contains abundant alcohol and smoking, some drug use, lots of self-destructive behaviors, one scene of dubious consent, and some brief violence of the domestic sort. da capo al fine. au.

Things pulled too taut must either give or break.

"You're fucking unbelievable," Jaehyo bites out, standing in the middle of the room, his fists curled so tight that his fingernails bite into his palms. He'll have indentations later, maybe bruises from the pressure. "One night I can't go out with you because I have a fucking interview the next morning and you find the prettiest little thing you can to fuck with? Is that what this is to you?"

The timing had been bad. Jaehyo, walking home from picking up dinner for himself, had walked past the bar where Jiho and Yukwon and Taeil had been drinking. He hadn't known it, not until he looked up just at the right moment, caught Jiho's hand threading through a pretty girl's hair, caught his lips pressing to her jaw as he whispered something in her ear. 

Jaehyo wasn't sure how his expression had looked, but he'd caught Yukwon's eye next and there had been something terrible and knowing in his gaze. 

"Can we not do this right now?" Jiho asks, from where he's slumped in his desk chair. He's still wearing his shoes, too tired or too hungover to remove them at the door. "My head is killing me."

"When's more convenient, then?" Jaehyo says with a laugh that sounds like broken glass. "Tomorrow? Next weekend? Never? Fuck you, this isn't—"

He'd felt good, earlier. Good while the high still lasted, but now he's coming down—they're both coming down, and Jaehyo can feel the sharp-clawed beast of sobriety taking hold in his stomach. His wrists and shoulders ache and itch and crawl, and Jaehyo, for a split second, hates Jiho more than he's ever hated anything, including himself.

"You're making a scene out of nothing," Jiho says, cutting Jaehyo off. He strips off his sweatshirt and tosses it in the general direction of the laundry basket, missing by about a foot. Funny how even that is annoying, right now.

"I _saw you_ , you asshole," Jaehyo says. "I saw you with her. I hope she was a good fuck, at least—"

"Yeah, she fucking was," Jiho snaps, his eyes flashing. He stands, and sometimes Jaehyo forgets that Jiho is a little taller, but right now he towers. Takes a step towards Jaehyo. "She was a great fuck, she screamed for me and I made her come three times before I left, and you—" He reaches out, takes hold of Jaehyo's jaw with a grip a little too firm. "You don't have a fucking foot to stand on, hypocrite. You think I don't know about you getting on your knees for Donghyun?"

The bottom drops out of Jaehyo's stomach, and he wants to be sick. The only way he keeps it back is force of will alone. "Fuck you," he whispers, and then repeats it again, louder, "fuck you, that's different."

"Oh, is it?" Jiho says, his lip curling. He lets go of Jaehyo's jaw. "Really seems like it."

"I did that for you, too—"

Jiho slaps him, backhands him across the face faster than Jaehyo can take a breath. The silence that falls afterward is huge. Jaehyo brings a hand up to touch the stinging skin of his cheek, the place where Jiho's ring had made contact with his cheekbone. Looks at Jiho, who looks stunned, then devastated.

"Jesus Christ," Jiho whispers. The anger is gone, all the rage and malice drained out of him in in an instant. Drained out of Jaehyo too, replaced by dull shock. "Jesus, Jaehyo, I'm so sorry—fuck, I'm—" He reaches out and touches Jaehyo's cheek very carefully, his eyes wet. "I'm so sorry, I can't believe I—"

Jaehyo pulls him in, and Jiho wraps his arms around Jaehyo so tight, holds him so close and whispers apologies in kisses pressed to his shoulder and neck and jaw. Ghosts kisses over his cheek, which will be bruised, in the morning.

"It's okay," Jaehyo whispers, his forehead pressed to Jiho's. "It's not you."

It's the heroin, he knows. The red-eyed monster of it, or of its absence, that makes them do things they would never do, otherwise. Things like stealing, like breaking and entering, like sucking cock for drugs in back alleys. 

"I'll never touch it again," Jiho promises, taking one of Jaehyo's hands in his. He kisses Jaehyo's knuckles, his palm, presses Jaehyo's hand to his cheek and holds Jaehyo's gaze. "Never. I swear to God, I swear on my mother. I can't believe I—" _Hit you_ , he doesn't say. Jaehyo hears it anyway.

"Okay," he says, nodding. "Me, too. We're done, okay? We're done with it."

It's the hardest promise Jaehyo's ever made, but the one he knows he'll work the most to keep.

 

For a while, it's good.

Well, the withdrawals aren't good, the days of nausea and skin-crawling pins and needles, headaches, bone aches, Jaehyo throws up on the floor more than once, Jiho too exhausted to clean it up, the both of them in agony and only the absence of another fix keeping them from getting high to stave it off. Jaehyo has a black eye that lingers for a week and every time he thinks about calling Donghyun, about getting just a little more, he looks at himself in the mirror and thinks, _I won't_. 

They don't leave the house for a week, spending it shivering, aching, slowly fading back to consciousness and clarity, the haze pulling back and leaving Jaehyo's mind, mostly, in his own grasp.

After that, it's good. Mostly. Something is different, but it's good.

Eight days after the day that Jiho hits Jaehyo for the first and only time, they get in the shower and Jiho kisses Jaehyo in a way he hasn't kissed Jaehyo in a long time. Sweet and soft and adoring, the way they used to kiss when they were first in love. He cups Jaehyo's face in both hands, draws his thumbs gently over Jaehyo's cheekbones, kisses him like he wants to drown in it. 

They clean up the apartment, make the bed, get rid of all the empty balloons and plastic wraps and dirty spoons. Open the blinds, let in some light. Jaehyo washes the dishes that have been piling up in the sink. Jiho does the laundry. It feels like getting the ground under their feet again, finding footing and making their lives again.

It's good, although lurking under everything is a certain delicate knowledge, of which they're reminded every time either of them catches sight of Jaehyo's face.

The bruising fades, eventually. Jiho comes home that day with acrylic paints and makes a palette of colors, bright and vibrant. "Take your clothes off," he tells Jaehyo with a grin, leaning in to press a quick kiss to Jaehyo's mouth. "I want to paint you."

"Why do my clothes have to be off for you to paint me?" Jaehyo asks, although he's already complying.

"I mean I want to paint on you," Jiho says.

Jaehyo strips down to his underwear and sits on the floor. Jiho does, too, right behind him so he can use Jaehyo's back as his canvas. "You're so thin," he murmurs, leaning forward to press his lips to the knob of bone at the top of Jaehyo's spine. "We need to start eating right again, too."

"Buy me groceries, I'll cook for you," Jaehyo says, smiling, looking down at the bird bones in his wrists. "We'll get there."

Jiho hums contentedly and touches his paintbrush to Jaehyo's shoulder blade.

When Jiho is done, the sun is fuller in the sky, the light more orange as it approaches the far horizon. He kisses behind Jaehyo's ear and murmurs, "All done, masterpiece," stands up to help Jaehyo off the floor.

"What did you paint?" Jaehyo asks. 

"Stand still," Jiho instructs. He takes a picture with his cell phone camera and shows it to Jaehyo, who holds it up to his face, inspecting. A mountain range, a sunset, the spread of a plum tree full of blossoms sweeping up over his shoulders, the dark shadow of it falling along his waist. 

"It's gorgeous," Jaehyo breathes, handing Jiho's phone back and then kissing him, and again, and again until they're both breathless and laughing.

So, it's good. It's different, more fragile, a pane of glass with a long crack running through it. But it's good.

 

Until it's not good, anymore.

Jaehyo gets a job at a café. It's nothing impressive, just bussing tables and cleaning dishes, but when he has the money he can go to barista training and learn to make the coffee, too, and the money will be better. More importantly, it's a job, something he hasn't had in months, and it's money, which he needs. Which they need, because last month their landlady came to knock on their door and tell them the rent was late, and Jaehyo had to borrow money from Yukwon in order to pay it.

That's good, but Jiho stumbling in the door at three in the morning drunk and high out of his mind is not.

In a way, Jaehyo supposes he should be surprised. Shocked, even, or betrayed, to know that Jiho hadn't held up his end of that promise that they made in earnest all those weeks ago. But he isn't, not really. It's been a rubber band stretched tight for so long that Jaehyo should have known better to think it would do anything other than snap.

"You're drunk," Jaehyo says, putting down his notebook. He'd been writing lyrics, but words don't come easy. "And high."

Jiho waves a hand, lazy and luxurious like he has all the time in the world. "Just a little," he says, offering Jaehyo a grin that would have thrilled him, a year ago. He kicks off his shoes, sheds his sweatshirt and shirt and pants, climbs into bed with Jaehyo. "C'mere, baby," he murmurs, and pulls Jaehyo in.

They fuck, but Jaehyo's heart isn't in it. Jiho comes first and falls asleep almost immediately, and Jaehyo cleans them both up, doesn't bother to get himself off.

It's hard to sleep, that night.

In the morning, when Jiho wakes up, Jaehyo is sitting at the desk and watching him. Almost immediately, Jiho realizes what's wrong—he sits up in bed, scrubs a hand through his hair. "Fuck, Jaehyo, I'm sorry," he says, "I was just—I was at this party, and all the guys were there, you know, and—I fucked up."

"Yeah," Jaehyo says, "you did." He isn't even angry. Doesn't have the emotional capacity left, to be angry. He just feels hollow. "And you're going to fuck up again, and again, and again, baby."

Jiho looks like he wants to argue. Jaehyo stands up, goes over to sit on the bed and kiss Jiho, soft and regretful. It was broken already, he knows. They had tried, valiantly, to pretend it wasn't, but pretending can only go so far. "I love you," he says, "but I can't keep doing this."

Jiho breathes in, breathes out. Deflates, like he knows he can't argue Jaehyo out of this one. "I know," he says. "I'm sorry."

"Me, too," Jaehyo says. "I'll be out of here by dark."

 

CODA

 

It's January again, and bitterly cold outside. Jaehyo is thankful for the heating inside the café, and for the insulation in the windows that his boss had installed last week, which keeps all that warmth inside. Jaehyo has always chilled easily, and he needs his fingertips to work properly, especially if he wants the promotion to manager that they've been murmuring about in the break room. Classes don't pay for themselves, after all.

He's sorting things in the stockroom when Minhyuk slips in, already fumbling at the ties of his apron. "There's a customer, can you take him?" he asks. "I've gotta pee like a racehorse."

"Okay, glad you told me that," Jaehyo says with a laugh. He adjusts his apron and puts away the last bag of coffee grounds, then steps out behind the counter. "Hi, welcome to—"

Freezes.

More than a year, and Jiho looks exactly the same. No, not exactly—he looks better, now, than he had when they'd met. Healthy, skin less sallow, cheekbones less defined. He's gained weight, and it looks good on him. His hair is a little too long, and Jaehyo has to resist the impulse, still engrained into his muscle memory, to brush it out of his face.

He looks good.

"Hi," Jaehyo says, his hands taking hold of either side of the register. "Long time no see."

"Yeah," Jiho says, "but that's probably for the best." He smiles, but it's tentative, not the confident, alluring grin that had first drawn Jaehyo in. Tentative like he's not sure he has the right to smile. "How are you?"

"I'm… fine," Jaehyo says. "Just—working. I go to school, now. Music. Just part-time, I'm still saving up."

Jiho nods, running his fingers absently over the display of mints in front of the counter. "That's good," he says. "You have a lot of talent, I'm glad you're not wasting it." He winces, immediately, at the choice of words. "I mean—shit, that's not how I meant that to come out—"

Jaehyo laughs softly and shakes his head. "Nah, it's okay," he says. "I'm glad I'm not, too." He studies Jiho's face for a long moment, then asks, "How are you?"

There are a lot of questions that go unspoken below the surface of that one, and Jiho hears all of them, he's sure. Are you still drinking? Still shooting up? "I'm good," Jiho says. "Better. It was pretty bad for a while, after…" He glances around, drops his voice. "After you left. But I'm good. I quit—you know. It took me a while, but it's better. Yukwon helped me out a lot. He's getting married next month, did you hear?"

"I didn't hear," Jaehyo says. "That's good. That's…" Shy, suddenly, he looks down, then back up. "I'm proud of you," he says. "Sorry, if that's weird."

"It's not," Jiho says. "Or—well, it is a little. I don't feel like I deserve you being proud of me." He pulls his wallet out of his pocket and says, "I guess I should order coffee so people don't think I'm flirting."

Jaehyo shakes his head, smiling, and rings Jiho up for a latte. "I haven't seen you around in a really long time," he says, taking Jiho's card.

"No," Jiho agrees, nodding. The silence between them stretches on for a long moment, and then Jiho clears his throat and adds, "But we could change that."

It's an olive branch, Jaehyo knows, and one he can accept only tentatively. Minhyuk is watching him with curiosity from the doorway to the stock room, but Jaehyo can't quite tear his eyes away from Jiho, who looks, for the first time since they met, unsure. It might be a bad idea, but Jaehyo has learned a lot about bad ideas in the last few years. Has learned that, sometimes, a bad idea is what makes a good chance.

"Yeah," he finally says, handing Jiho his card and receipt. "I guess we could."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> best read to the tune of [PINK SHEETS](https://soundcloud.com/lilvhs/pink-sheets) by TRIAD$. 
> 
> thank you and sorry to all who read through this! I promise the next time I write jaeco, it'll be a little less upsetting. I only wanted it to be three parts, but part three was nearly as long as parts one and two put together, so in the end it became four. c'est la vie.
> 
> you can also find me on Twitter at @[2amtomorning](http://www.twitter.com/2amtomorning), where I am always accepting fic requests and ideas. (please give me ideas!!)


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